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1. 00:00 No text Is it okay to cure one mental illness with another? Is it okay to heal by transitioning from, for example, one type of addiction to another? Is it considered um healing or recovery when you develop delusions and fantasies as ways of coping with a reality that had become
2. 00:28 intolerable and burdensome and unbearable? This is a philosophical question that I address at the end of this video. But first I would like to emphasize that certain mental health pathologies have a curative effect. They are therapeutic strangely. And today I want to focus on
3. 00:51 two of them. Delusions and fantasies as therapeutic tools. My name is Sambaknin. I am the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and I’m a professor of psychology fantasies and delusions reduce anxiety and amilarate and mitigate depression. They are anxolytic.
4. 01:14 They’re anti-depressant. These are facts. When you find yourself embedded in a fantasy, when you delude yourself into thinking something, you feel a lot better. You feel safer. You feel more stable, you’re more functional, and you are most definitely happier.
5. 01:36 Why then can’t we consider fantasies and delusions and even anxiety as legitimate therapeutic tools in the arsenal of psychotherapy? I will deal with that at the end of the video. But first, let us delve deeper into the healing impacts or healing
6. 01:59 effects of delusions and fantasies. Number one, they restore a sense of control. They empower you. Fantasies and delusions revert the locus of control from the outside external to the inside internal. You regain possession and ownership of your life.
7. 02:23 You feel that you are in charge. You’re in control. You’re in the driver’s seat. And that’s a very refreshing and very often new feeling. When you are delusional, when you’re immorted in fantasy, you can ignore the world. You can ignore reality and the harsh messages that it
8. 02:43 keeps sending. You can ignore the push back of counterveailing information. You can pretend. Pretensions that amount to selfdeception are very powerful. They create an internal reality which is indistinguishable from the external one. In extreme cases, of course, this leads
9. 03:02 to psychosis and the mechanism known as hyper reflexivity. Number two, fantasies and delusions introduce into the narrative space omnipotent allies. You can imagine, you can create imaginary friends, imaginary collaborators, imaginary allies who are godlike, omnipotent,
10. 03:30 omniscient, benevolent. So many people do this with God. They delusionally believe in the existence of a supreme being which is good, perfect and complete, whole. And this supreme being is protecting them, guiding them and making sure that only just desserts, just outcomes
11. 03:58 uh ultimately emerge whether in this life or in the afterlife. The ability to introduce imaginary friends, omnipotent allies into the narrative is one of the key features of delusions and fantasies. And in pathological narcissism, it culminates with the creation of the false self.
12. 04:19 Number three, No text delusions and fantasies are techniques of self-enhancement. When you’re delusional or when you’re involved in a fantasy, you feel important. You feel that you matter. You feel that you’re a change agent. You feel that you’re a participant in historical or
13. 04:42 cosmic events. If you’re paranoid, you convince yourself that you’re the center of attention, malign attention, but still attention. All fantasies and delusions are therefore self aggrandizing and self-enhancing. There are forms of cognitive distortions that involve grandiosity.
14. 05:02 Next, fantasies and delusions allow you to reverse the arrow of time to put consequences before antic anticidence before causes. So consequences determine the causes rather than the other way around. And this gives you a sense of control over the environment and results or
15. 05:24 consequences of actions, decisions and choices by reversing the error of time by pretending that whatever is happening is under your control. And and this allows you to change the chain of causation. This allows you to control the causes, control the anticidence.
16. 05:50 This pretention, this delusion built into most fantasies is very comforting, is anxolytic, reduces anxiety and self soothing. Next, fantasies and delusions by definition shut off reality. They select for congruency. In other words, fantasies and delusions
17. 06:14 create an alternative virtual reality within which the individual experiences egoony and ego congruency. In other words, no dissonance, no internal conflict, no battle between conflicting pieces of information, dissonant elements and things which are in stark
18. 06:40 disagreement or mutually exclusive. Fantasy and delusion serve as organizing principles. They organize reality, internal reality within the fantasy, within the delusion in a way that gets gets rid of all the sharp edges and all the stimuli and cues and
19. 07:05 and information that emanate from the environment and challenge um one’s ability to pretend that everything is fine. So delusions and fantasies are counterfactual and this allows them to create a universe of contentment, happiness, comfort, soothing, and egoony. Because of this,
20. 07:39 fantasies and delusions resemble the womb. They’re like the matrix. Matrix is another word for the womb uterus where the b the where the fetus grows and becomes a baby a baby and inborn and so so these features of the fantasy fantasies and delusions render them a secure base.
21. 08:02 Fantasy fosters a secure base. It’s a back to the womb experience. And most fantasies and delusions involve the idealization of parental figures. The parental figure could be God in religion which is the ultimate form of delusional disorder. The parental figure could be a
22. 08:21 lover who is fulfilling a maternal role. The parental figure could be a leader, a charismatic magnetic leader who is acting in place of an absent or missing paternal figure. There’s a secure base element in fantasies and delusions. No text Fantasies and and delusions
23. 08:44 are not only organizing principles, but they are also hermeneutic principles. In other words, principles of explanation, explanatory, interpretative, allow for interpretation. They imbue life with an with an egoonic narrative meaning. In other words, when you adopt a
24. 09:09 delusion or when you decide to become part of a fantasy, a cult for example, a political party which is based on fantasy, um a relationship which is a shared fantasy, when you do this, your life suddenly becomes meaningful. It is part of a narrative and it’s
25. 09:30 egoonic. It feels good. And so delusions and fantasies provide you with meaning, purpose, goals, and direction. They are prescriptive and they also guarantee immunity. Because if you are allied with a divinity, if you are surrounded by an environment
26. 09:51 which is fully under your control and replete with imaginary friends which are as powerful as any god on Olympus, then you are a def a divinity yourself. This is reflected divinity. Divinity by proxy, vicarious divinity. And as such, you are immune to the consequences of
27. 10:10 your actions. You’re invincible. You’re untouchable. The other option is to pretend to be a harmless child within the fantasy within the delusion. You infantilize. You become a a child. And children are harmless and they’re deserving of special protection. No one should harm
28. 10:28 or hurt a child. Be that as it may, whatever role you do, godlike or childlike, both cases, the outcome of the fantasy or the delusion is the belief or the innate conviction in some kind of overriding cosmically induced or cosmic cosmically preferred immunity.
29. 10:50 And this allows you to go after your enemies. Many fantasies and delusions are vengeful. They’re intended to purge enemies. They’re intended to expand your existence of hostile forces. They’re intended to convert the world from an unfriendly place into a habitat, an
30. 11:11 ecosystem which is uniquely tailored and custommade to fit your needs, your expectations, your wishes, your dreams, and your desires. But to do all this, you need to get rid of obstacles, of hindrances. you need to u eliminate dissenting voices. And so many fantasies and
31. 11:30 delusions are persecuto. They’re vindictive and they’re paranoid. No text The way fantasies and and delusions accomplish this, the purging of of the fantastic space of perceived real or imagined enemies and hostile forces is by controlling and channeling or sublimating
32. 11:55 threatening negative effects such as anger and envy. The biggest enemy of of people who believe in who who people who are prone to fantasies and delusions, their biggest enemy is themselves. These people are typically self-defeating, self-destructive,
33. 12:18 self-trashing and selfharming. Typically, the broken broken and damaged, which is why they’ve given up on reality and opted for a fantasy or a delusion. And so these people are threatened from the inside. The real enemy is inside. It’s a Trojan horse. It’s a fifth column.
34. 12:39 And there are these negative effects which are overpowering, disregulating, overwhelming, such as envy and rage and hatred and fear. And what the fantasy and delusions allow such an individual to do is to control these negative effects to channel them to sublimate them to
35. 12:58 convert them into socially acceptable impulses and behaviors and this reduces the sense of threat. This reduces the ominous background noise. This this renders the environment the internal environment and by implication the external environment a lot safer
36. 13:18 by removing the capacity for self-destruction and self-deeat or by neutralizing it somehow neutering it the fantasy or the delusion indeed restore mental health to some extent and reduce paranoid ideiation hypervigilance suspiciousness alertness
37. 13:39 And the expect and catastrophizing the expectation of the worst. Healing involve involves healing, mental healing, mental mental cures, mental rec mental psychological recovery. They involve egoonyy. They involve full functionality. And fantasies and delusions provide both.
38. 14:05 But should it also involve reality testing? Let us discuss this philosophical problem. It’s not a psychological problem. It’s a philosophical problem. No text There is a professional consensus nowadays about what constitutes mental health and what amounts to a process of
39. 14:34 psychological healing. But I’m going to raise two important questions which go unanswered in the literature because these are essentially philosophical questions and these questions put in doubt the current consensus and turning a blind eye to some issues. My name is Svaknin.
40. 15:00 I’m the author of malignant self- loveve narcissism revisited and I’m a professor of psychology. So today as I said there’s a consensus mental health and the process of psychological healing involve ego syony and full functionality. In other words, let me
41. 15:18 translate this to English. If you feel good with yourself, if you feel comfortable with yourself, if you’re content with who you are, if you’re even happy, golucky, which is a rarity, and at the same time you’re fully functional. You function well within
42. 15:35 your family and household, in the workplace, society at large, with institutions, any setting, every environment. You’re perfectly functional and you’re happy with who you are. Put these two conditions together and what you get is mental health. This is the orthodoxy.
43. 15:57 This is what we teach at universities. But is it the whole picture? And even worse, is it a correct picture? For example, how about someone who is perfectly happy with himself or herself, functions well everywhere, accomplishes goals, is self-efficacious and egoonic, you know,
44. 16:25 but also delusional. The reality testing of this person is impaired. This person believes crazy things. This person comes up with the most amazing counterfactual theories. This person completely mispersceives and misunderstands reality and how it functions. The minds of other
45. 16:47 people um how relationship should work. No text Reality testing could be intact and could be impaired. If we have someone who is egoonous, in other words, perfectly comfortable with who he is, is fully functional, but is also utterly divorced from reality,
46. 17:11 suffers from a delusional disorder, or maybe a psychotic disorder, or maybe he’s a narcissist. Would you then say that this person is mentally healthy? According to current consensus, yes, you would. But I believe I think that’s wrong. Take for example religion. Religion is a
47. 17:33 delusional disorder. An extreme form of delusional disorder actually. And yet religious people are considered mentally healthy. I suspect that religious people are considered mentally healthy because of the money involved and the power involved and the politics, not because
48. 17:54 it’s clinically justified. I think if we were to apply clinical psychology, the criteria, diagnostic criteria, rigorously, we would reach a conclusion that the vast majority, if not all, religious people, people who believe in a god in supernatural beings.
49. 18:14 We would reach a conclusion that these people are mentally ill. They’re completely delusional. They’re wacko. They’re crazy. that we don’t do this, that we sidestep this issue, that we say, “Oh, it’s okay to be delusional. It’s okay to believe
50. 18:32 in non-existent entities. It’s okay to uh create stories and theories that have nothing to do with reality.” That that’s perfectly okay. Nothing wrong with that. As long as you’re happy and as long as you’re functional. I think this is wrong. I think it’s motivated by by the
51. 18:52 wrong reasons. And I think it shifts the emphasis from individual health, individual mental health to the benefits to society, the greater good. The emphasis is on whether you are functioning. But who benefits when you are functioning? Not only you, society at
52. 19:11 large benefits. And the emphasis is whether you are egoinous, whether you’re happy with yourself, whether you’re comfortable with yourself. But who benefits from that? You, but also society at large. Because people who are not happy with themselves, people who
53. 19:26 are not comfortable with themselves, they’re depressed, they’re anxious, they can become violent and aggressive. So this definition, this consensus of mental health is socially driven, relationally driven. It has little to do in my view with the clinical psychology
54. 19:47 of the individual and the decision to ignore delusions, impaired reality testing, nonsensical conspiratorial thinking, the delusions to normalize these is socially, politically motivated. It’s money motivated. It’s not professional. is nothing to do with the
55. 20:12 profession. Because if you were to bring someone to a clinic to a clinical setting and this someone is religious, you should obey your professional conscience and diagnose them with a delusional disorder and prescribe medication probably. End
56. 20:31 of story. That’s not two ways about it. And this raises another question. If one mental illness is useful in clear in curing or healing another mental illness, does this amount to curing and healing? No text It’s like the famous the famous uh joke.
57. 20:54 If you have a very difficult headache, stub your toe and you will forget about the headache. So, one injury compensates for another. We have a a patient. This patient has a mental illness or mental health disorder, mental health problem or issue.
58. 21:15 We help them to develop another mental health problem, another mental health issue, another illness and then the first one, the presenting illness is resolved. Of course, again I’m going to use religion as an example. Religion is a delusional disorder. Paranoia is a
59. 21:36 delusional disorder many ways. So, but people with this delusional disorder, people with religion, religious delusional disorder, here I just coined a new diagnosis. People with religious delusional disorder feel good with themselves. They’re happy. They feel
60. 21:57 comfortable. They’re fully functional. So this mental illness known as religion
61. 22:06 seems to help seems to be helpful and useful. It brings about something that is identified or misidentified as healing. Shouldn’t we prescribe religion as a way to heal all mental illness? I don’t think so. I don’t think it’s morally justifiable or clinically
62. 22:26 sustainable to use one mental illness, the belief in God, to cure another mental illness, depression, for example. I don’t think it’s a it’s a solution. I think it’s idiotic. Similarly, I don’t think that encouraging paranoia and conspiracy theories,
63. 22:44 even if they lead to a state of contentment and happiness, I don’t think they should be encouraged. I think we should get rid of the idea that we can cure one mental illness by fostering and engendering and supporting and accepting another mental illness.
64. 23:06 Religion is a delusional disorder. It’s not a cure. It does not involve healing. It involves a transformation of mental illness from one form to another. Yes, you’re not depressed anymore. Yes, you’re not anxious anymore. Now you are merely delusional.
65. 23:22 Same with paranoia. Same with narcissism. These are the two elephants in the room of clinical psychology. I think until we resolve these these uh philosophical conundrums, foundational philosophical conundrums, the whole field rests on very very shaky moral ground.
66. 23:44 to quote a much bigger intellect than me, uh, drain the swamp.